Mahindra & Mahindra won't copy Tesla, vows different offering

"We have just committed that we are working on high end cars. Tesla was the pioneer, so Mahindra should develop its seperate niche," Anand Mahindra said.Ketan Thakkar | ET Bureau | August 05, 2017, 08:50 IST

Mahindra Racing finished 3rd in the recently concluded Formula E Racing competition ahead of global brands like Jaguar just behind Renault and Audi. "We were third out of 10 constructors, after Renault and Audi.MUMBAI: Reinforcing its future bet on electric vehicle, Anand Mahindra, the chairman of Mahindra & Mahindra informed shareholders that the company will have range of electric cars -right from a small car to a vehicle for shared mobility platforms like Ola and Uber to even a performance car under the Pininfarina brand.

Addressing shareholders at the 71st annual general meeting, Mahindra said he is not interested in being Tesla of India, the company would rather create a differentiated offering than following Tesla. He said Mahindra has a strategy both for ride sharing in fleet business right upto premium vehicles.

"We have just committed that we are working on high end cars. Tesla was the pioneer, so Mahindra should develop its seperate niche. There is no point in copying anybody, you have to differntiate yourself. We are spending significant amount of money on electric. We are ahead of the game," said Mahindra.

Mahindra Electric a subsidiary of Mahindra & Mahindra has already invested about Rs 500 crore in the EV business and has recently committed an additionalRs 600 crore. The company currently imports cell and packages and fits it on to the vehicles.

He told shareholders that apart from shared economy, one of the biggest influencer for the future is clean energy products -a segment, where government too is showing keen interest.

GST on electric cars is fixed at 12%, plus the industry also gets benefit of Rs 1 lakh or so under FAME scheme, apart from waiver on road tax from some governments.

However the industry should not rely on the government subsidies to make a segment work, feels Mahindra. "For electric vehicles to take off they must become competitive against the gasoline and I believe that is around the corner given the falling battery costs. If you as an industry are going to depend on government for subsidies, it will never survive," said Mahindra.

Mahindra Racing finished 3rd in the recently concluded Formula E Racing competition ahead of global brands like Jaguar just behind Renault and Audi. "We were third out of 10 constructors, after Renault and Audi.

We are getting enormous technology feedback from there, Formula Electric is our laboratory in that sense, that is part of the reason we will succeed in the high end of electric vehicles," reasoned Mahindra.

On the recent exit of Mahindra Electric from the UK Market, Mahindra defended saying that market for EVs in UK had moved up from affordable small cars to high performance electric cars.

Mahindra said the company had to be agile and react to market demand by withdrawing from the market.

"We tried a very unique model in UK where we had no dealerships, we are re-adjusting our strategy for Europe with EVs. What we found out was the market has moved very quickly from smaller E2O like vehicles to higher end EV - it is better to return when we have a right product for Europe. As you know we have acquired Pininfarina, we intend to be in the higher end EV space,so we will come back with a product which is suitable for European market," assured Mahindra.

M&M Q1PAT FALLS 20% ON GSTMahindra & Mahindra registered a 20% drop in profit after tax (PAT) for June ending first quarter of FY18 missing street expectations by significant margin pulled down by Rs 144 crore of provision on account of transition loss to GST regime.

Net profit for April to June first quarter of FY18 stood at Rs 768 crore versusRs 961.3 crore it registered for the same period last fiscal.

Outperformance in the tractor segment with a record high market share of 45.8% during Q1, helped company circumvent fall in volumes in passenger vehicle space helping net revenues for Q1to grow by 5.4% to Rs 11,094 crore. EBIDTA margins for Q1 declined 110 basis points to 14.2%.

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